by Jean NaHas
It's been fifteen years since the shattering. The old ones still talk about it - watching gods fight in the heavens, beating each other with such bloody power that time itself broke in the conflict. fifteen years since the four cities found themselves in a strange place, with a perfect circle of land taken from their old world with them. Twenty five years of exploring, fighting Saurian monstrosities that can swallow a man with one bite, and battling raging storms stronger than any experienced before. New Merab, with its once great sand dunes now growing grasses and ferns of this alien place, with great herds of three-horned behemoths grazing upon the new soil. Nolinstrad, a once-great capital city with its great fields of grain now under constant threat from the great reptilian predators that prowl into their land from the jungles of Vanwe, Anoth, a primitive, tribal place - a once frozen tundra ruled by Dragon-Slaying tribal Kings, now thawed in the heat of the jungle into a fetid swamp where fan-backed monstrosities swim and hunt unwary clansmen. Above them all, in elegant forests protected by enchantments, lies Tau'Tirion, the home of the Elves, who see this sudden separation, and the sudden death of so many humans, as their chance to rise again. Connected now by thin and barely maintained lines of trade through savage jungles, and over roiling seas, where saurian beasts prey upon the unwary and the unprepared, only the strongest are able to forge a new life and conquer this new world. Roaming jungles and plains scattered with fragments of civilization left over from broken time, none know if this is the past, or the future, or some other world altogether. None know why some of their gods have fallen silent, while others remain and give their power to their chosen. All people of the four Cities know one thing: This is Vanwe, Island of the Lost - and it is a Hungry place indeed.
